Terms from our lit journals!
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| 289010799 | Arete | A humble and constant striving for perfection and self improvement combined with a realistic awareness that such perfection cannot be reached. | 0 | |
| 289010800 | Allegory | Words that have double meaning throughout the work as a whole (ex. animal farm). | 1 | |
| 289010801 | Alliteration | Repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or begging several words with the same vowel sounds. | 2 | |
| 289010802 | Allusion | A casual reference to literature to a person, place, event, or passage of another piece of literature without identification. | 3 | |
| 289010803 | Ambiguity | A negative term applied to a vague or equivocal expression when precision would be more useful. Sometimes it can be a positive thing, opening up the text in a new way | 4 | |
| 289010804 | Anachronism | Placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong time period. | 5 | |
| 289010805 | Analogy | The modification of grammatical usage from the desire for uniformity. | 6 | |
| 289010806 | Anaphora | The repetition at the beginning of clauses. | 7 | |
| 289010807 | Anastrophe | Inverted order of words or events as a rhetorical scheme. | 8 | |
| 289010808 | Anthropomorphism | The act of attributing human forms or qualities to an entries which are not human. Describes the human forms of greek gods/ goddesses with human characteristics. | 9 | |
| 289010809 | Antithesis | Using opposite phrases in close conjunction. | 10 | |
| 289010810 | Aphorism | Brief saying embodying a moral, concise, statement of a principle or precept given in pointed words. | 11 | |
| 289010811 | Aporia | The deliberate act of talking about how one is unable to talk about something. | 12 | |
| 289010812 | Apostrophe | When an absent person, abstract concept, or object is directly addressed. | 13 | |
| 289010813 | Archetype | Usage of any object or situation as it was originally made- big cliche, but one that never dies. | 14 | |
| 289010814 | Assonance | Repetition of vowel sounds but not consonant sounds. A series of related causes. | 15 | |
| 289010815 | Ballad | Song hits, folk music, and folk tales or any song that tells a story are loosely called ballads OR narrative poem consisting of quatrains of iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic triameter. | 16 | |
| 289010816 | Blank Verse | Unrhymed lines of ten syllables each with the even- numbered syllables bearing the accents. | 17 | |
| 289010817 | Cacophony | Use of words that combine sharp, harsh, hissing, or unmelodious sounds. | 18 | |
| 289010818 | Canto | A sub-division of an epic or narrative poem comparable to a chapter in a novel. | 19 | |
| 289010819 | Circumlocution | The use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter format of expression; around about manner of writing/ speaking. | 20 | |
| 289010820 | Cogito Ergo Sum | The extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary. | 21 | |
| 289010821 | Conflict | The opposition between two things. | 22 | |
| 289010822 | Connotation | The associated or secondary meaning of a word or expression in addition to its explicit or primary meaning. | 23 | |
| 289010823 | Consonance | Repetition of consonant sounds, but not vowels. | 24 | |
| 289010824 | Denotation | The literal meaning of a word. | 25 | |
| 289010825 | Dactyl | A three syllable foot consisting of neary stress and two light stresses. | 26 | |
| 289010826 | Didactic | Writing that is preachy or seeks overtly to convince a reader of a particular point or lesson. | 27 | |
| 289010827 | Diction | The choice of a particular word as opposed to others. | 28 | |
| 289010828 | Digression | A message that departs from the main subject. | 29 | |
| 289010829 | Double Entendre | A literary device that deliberately uses ambiguity in a phrase or image. "double meaning." | 30 | |
| 289010830 | Doppelganger | Ghostly double of another character. Carbon copy of a character with a differenct soul. | 31 | |
| 289010831 | Elegy | Any poem written in elegiac meter. Any poem dealing with the subject- manner common to early Greco- Roman elegies. | 32 | |
| 289010832 | Ekphrastic | A dramatic expression of a work of art. | 33 | |
| 289010833 | Enjambment | A line having no pause or end punctuation into the next line. | 34 | |
| 289010834 | Emulation | A poem that is rewritten using different words. | 35 | |
| 289010835 | Epigram | Manifestation of God's presence in the world. | 36 | |
| 289010836 | Eponym | A word that is derived from the proper name of a person or place. | 37 | |
| 289010837 | Epiphany | Revelation of such power and insight that it alters the entire world view. | 38 | |
| 289010838 | Epistle | A poem adressed to a friend, patron, or family member. A "letter" inverse. | 39 | |
| 289010839 | Epithet | A short poetic nickname. | 40 | |
| 289010840 | Etymology | Study of the history of words, origins, form, and meaning have changed over time. | 41 | |
| 289010841 | Euphemism | The substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener. | 42 | |
| 289010842 | Fable | Succinct fictional story featuring animals, ect. which are given human qualities that illustrate a moral lesson. | 43 | |
| 289010843 | Flashback | Action that interrupts to show an event that happened at an earlier time which is necessary to better understanding. | 44 | |
| 289010844 | Foil | A character that serves by contrast to hilight or emphasize opposing traits in another character. | 45 | |
| 289010845 | Foot | A basic unit of meter consisting of a set number of strong stresses and light stresses. | 46 | |
| 289010846 | Foreshadowing | Suggesting, hinting what will happen later in a narrative. | 47 | |
| 289010847 | Freeverse | Poetry based on natural rhythms of phrases and normal pauses rather than artificial constraints of metrical feet. | 48 | |
| 289010848 | Grotesque | A mutation of the characters, plants, or animals. OR A work in which two are mixed. | 49 | |
| 289010849 | Hamartia | A term from Greek tragedy that literally means, "missing the mark." | 50 | |
| 289010850 | Heroic Couplet | Two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter. The second line is usually end- stopped. | 51 | |
| 289010851 | Homily | A sermon, or short exhortatory work to be read before a group of listeners in order to instruct them spiritually or morally. | 52 | |
| 289010852 | Hubris | A negative term implying both arrogant, excessive self- pride or self- confidence. | 53 | |
| 289010853 | Hyperbole | The trope of exaggeration or overstatement. | 54 | |
| 289010854 | Iamb | A unit or foot of poetry that consists of lightly stressed syllable by a heavily stressed syllable. | 55 | |
| 289010855 | Imagery | Mental pictures that a reader experiences with a passage of literature. | 56 | |
| 289010856 | Internal Rhyme | A poetic device in which a word in the middle of a line rhyme with a word at the end of the same line. | 57 | |
| 289010857 | Invective | Speech or writing that attacks, insults, or denounces a person, topic, or institution, usually involving negative emotional language. | 58 | |
| 289010858 | Inversion | The changing of the usual order of words. | 59 | |
| 289010859 | Irony | Dramatic: Audience percieves something that a character in lit does not know. Verbal: When an author says one thing and means something else. Situational: Discrepancy between the expected result and actual results. | 60 | |
| 289010860 | Juxtaposition | When one theme or idea or person is paralleled to another. | 61 | |
| 289010861 | Lyrical | Expressing the authors emotions in an imaginative and beautiful way. | 62 | |
| 289010862 | Malapropism | Misusing words to create a comical effect or making the character to seem flustered to use the correct diction. | 63 | |
| 289010863 | Metaphor | The comparison of two unlike things. | 64 | |
| 289010864 | Metonomy | Substituting one word for another word closely associated with it. | 65 | |
| 289010865 | Motif | A reoccuring thematic element in an artistic or literary work. | 66 | |
| 289010866 | Mood | Emotional attitude the author takes toward his/ her subject. | 67 | |
| 289010867 | Nemesis | The principle of retributive justice by which good characters are rewarded and bad characters are appropriately punished. | 68 | |
| 289010868 | Neologism | A made up word that is not part of normal, everyday vocabulary. | 69 | |
| 289010869 | Onomatopoeia | The use of sounds that are similar to the noise they represent for a rhetorical or artistic affect. | 70 | |
| 289010870 | Oxymoron | Using contradiction in a manner that odly makes sense on a deeper level. | 71 | |
| 289010871 | Parable | A short story or narrative designed to reveal allegorically some religious principle, moral lesson, psych reality, or general truth. | 72 | |
| 289010872 | Parody | A parody imitates the serious matter and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features. | 73 | |
| 289010873 | Paradox | Using a contradiction in a manner that odly makes sense on a deeper level. | 74 | |
| 289010874 | Pentameter | When poetry consists of five feet in each line. | 75 | |
| 289010875 | Primogeniture | The late medevial custom of allowing the first born legitamite male child to inherit all of his fathers property and wealth upon a father's death. | 76 | |
| 289010876 | Personification | A trope in which abstract, animal, ideas, inanimate object are given human character, traits, abilities, or reactions. | 77 | |
| 289010877 | Point Of View | The way a story gets told and who tells it. It is the method of narration that determines the position, or angle of vision from which the story unfolds. | 78 | |
| 289010878 | Polysyndenton | Using many conjunctions to achieve an overwhelming effect in a sentence. | 79 | |
| 289010879 | Prologue | A prologue is a section of any introductory material before the first chapter or main material of a prosework. | 80 | |
| 289010880 | Prosody | The mechanics of verse poetry- sounds rhythm, scansion, meter, stanzaic form, alliteration, assonance, euphony, onomatopoeia. | 81 | |
| 289010881 | Quatrain | Also sometimes used interchangeably with "stave" quatrain is a stanza of four lines, often rhyming in an ABAB pattern. | 82 | |
| 289010882 | Repartee | Conversation or speech characterized by quick, witty comments. | 83 | |
| 289010883 | Rhyme Scheme | The pattern of rhyme. | 84 | |
| 289010884 | Rhetorical Question | A statement or word that has no expected answer. | 85 | |
| 289010885 | Reliability (Reliable Narrator) | The narrator can be trusted or believed. | 86 | |
| 289010886 | Syllogism | Logical argument in which one preposition is inferred from two or more others of a certain form. | 87 | |
| 289010887 | Satire | An attack on or any critism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor. | 88 | |
| 289010888 | Setting | The general locale, historical time, and social circumstances in which the action of a fictional or dramatic work occurs. | 89 | |
| 289010889 | Simile | An analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as like or as. | 90 | |
| 289010890 | Sonnet | Italian: Eight stanza line, Two quatrains rhyming- abba, abba. The first of which presents the theme, the second further develops it. English: Uses three quatrains; each rhymed differently, with a final independantly rhymed couplet that makes an effective unifying climax to its whole. Militonian: Does not advise its thought between the octave and these set the sense or line of thinking runs straight from the eighth to the ninth line. | 91 | |
| 289010891 | Stanza | An arrangement of lines of verse in a pattern usually repeated throughout the poem. | 92 | |
| 289010892 | Stream Of Consciousness | Special mode of narration that undertakes to capture the full spectrum and the continuous flow of character's mental processes. | 93 | |
| 289010893 | Sublime | Evoking emotions into the reader of delight combination of terror and amazement. | 94 | |
| 289010894 | Synecdoche | A part of a person or thing is used to designate the whole, or the whole of an object representing a part. | 95 | |
| 289010895 | Synesthesia | A rhetorical trope involving shifts in imagery. Taking one type of sensory input and combining it with another sense. | 96 | |
| 289010896 | Syntax | The orderly arrangement of words into sentences to express ideas. | 97 | |
| 289010897 | Tabula Rosa | The idea that humanity is born completely innocent without any initial predispositions, attitudes, or beliefs. | 98 | |
| 289010898 | Terza Rima | Alternating rhyme scheme with triplets. | 99 | |
| 289010899 | Tetrameter | A verse of four measures. | 100 | |
| 289010900 | Triplet | ABBA, CDDC, EFFE. | 101 | |
| 289010901 | Theme | A message that the overall work is conveying. | 102 | |
| 289010902 | Tone | The feeling that the work convey's across. | 103 | |
| 289010903 | Tragedy | A serious play in which the lead character comes across many misfortunes. | 104 | |
| 289010904 | Understatement (Euphemism) | Understanding the obvious. | 105 | |
| 289010905 | Versimilitude | Strong imagery that brings the book to "life". | 106 | |
| 289010906 | Verse | A line of symmetrical writing or stanza in rhyme. | 107 | |
| 289010907 | Versification | A system of rhyme or meter in poetry. | 108 | |
| 295906697 | Asyndenton | Conjunctions are deliberately omitted from a series of related clauses. | 109 |
